Work in the area under the Steele Bayou bridge is expected to close Mississippi 465 during daylight hours for about a week, a spokesman for the Mississippi Department of Transportation said.

The bridge work is part of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to repair a subsurface scour hole in Steele Bayou and stabilize a section of the bayou’s bank south of the bridge.

MDOT spokesman Kenny Foote said Mississippi 465 would be closed daily from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. beginning Wednesday while a contractor hired by the Corps makes the repairs.

Only emergency traffic will be allowed to cross the bridge while work is in progress. Non-emergency traffic will be detoured on the backwater levee across the Steele Bayou Structure.

“We have been told the work (affecting the bridge) should be completed in a week,” he said. “The highway will be closed during peak hours, but people going to work in the morning and going home in the evening should be able to use the bridge,” he said.

The hole developed downstream south of the bridge, prompting the repair job, a Corps spokesman said.

Kent Parrish, Corps senior project manager for the Mississippi levees, said the project involves stabilizing the bank area under the bridge and stabilizing about 500 feet of the bayou’s bank south of the bridge with rip rap. He said the bottom of the bayou’s channel has already been stabilized.

“We had to stabilize the bottom before we could begin work on the bank. We had done some stabilization work on the north side of the bridge in the 1980s. We’re extending that work south.”

Fishing and boating along the channel from the Steel Bayou Control Structure to the Yazoo River is prohibited during the construction, which is expected to continue until mid-November, according to information from the Corps.